THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN.

[From the Argus.]

From the large number of young girls who have recently been apprehended and brought before the magistrates on charges of vagrancy, it would seem that the comforts of home are unknown in a great many families in this city. Most of these girls have been found to have both homes and parents. The history given of them by their fathers and mothers has been that they were troublesome,that they would stay out late at night, that they persisted in associating with disreputable companions, and that in a general way they were intractable. Their parents have apparently been deeply distressed at the persistent waywardness of their children, but they have in all cases been anxious to show that the waywardness was a quality for which they, the parents, were totally unable to account. According to their own statements, parents are in all cases models of moral excellence, and neglect no means in the way of domestic supervision necessary to train the minds of their children into a properly-disciplined condition. They utter the most afflicting regrets in court, and excite the sympathy of the bystanders by their tears, so that, at first sight, it appears as if the girls had gone to ruin from an inherent determination to be ruined, despite the moral suasion of their natural guardians, and notwithstanding the charm of their comfortable firesides.

The truth is, however, that with very few exceptions, it is the rule for the homes of the class to which these girls belong to be in the last degree comfortless, and the simple explanation of the comfortlessness is, that the mothers of families living in such homes are, and always have been, ignorant of domestic duties, and are untidy and thriftless. the wives of the working men of Victoria are, for the most part, the domestic servants of former years, and of the thorough incompetency of this class it is needless to speak. The qualities which made them a continual torment in the houses where they were employed as servants, have helped to make them bad wives and worse mothers, and thus their children, having in fact lived in the streets from their infancy, continue to prefer the streets as they approach manhood and womanhood. They do not all become larrikins and prostitutes, but it is exactly in this way that larrikins and prostitutes are produced. They have never known the comforts of home, and they may be said to have acquired a sort of coarse Bohemianism almost in their cradle.

In his report just presented to the borough council of East Collingwood, Dr. Livingstone, the health officer, speaks particularly of the squalid condition of many of the houses in that district. East Collingwood is probably the poorest of all the suburban localities, and perhaps presents the most extreme cases in the way of miserable homes ; but any medical man whose practice lies among what may be described as the lower working-classes, knows very well how difficult it is to exaggerate the description of the dirty misery of thousands of habitations in this city and its surroundings. To be sure, most of the houses are far too small, inconveniently built, badly ventilated, and ill-drained; but they are rendered infinitely more uninhabitable by the neglect of the women who live in them to make them as clean and as bright as the circumstances will permit. To the frowsy home, and the dirty, cheerless fireside, are due much of the drunkenness of the men, most of the ruffianism of the boys, and probably all the loose habits of the young woman, which together give such a large amount of occupation to the police.

The worst part of this neglect of the commoner domestic duties is, that the cause of it is increasing. There is no improvement whatever in the class of women who eventually become the mothers of the lawless youth of this country, so that the prospect is not a cheering one. There is work enough for the true philanthropist, if he only know how, or would consent to be taught how, to go about it. If the associated moralists of Victoria would proclaim the one great evangel of cleanliness and homeliness to the thousands who now are practically ignorant of it, there would in the future, at any rate, be less both of larrikinism and prostitution.

The Mercury  1 February 1871,

[Ah! Youth, lawless youth. Forever with us; as too, the offended Moral majority crowd who think they are "natural guardians."]